


two can keep a secret

by Joysweeper



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Eggs, Fratricide, Gen, Hatoful birdfic, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 18:39:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joysweeper/pseuds/Joysweeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuuya's brother is alive in the shell and making sounds when spoken to. Soon, he'll hatch.</p><p>That leaves that bastard's egg.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two can keep a secret

Today there's a great deal of excitement in the mansion. A minor noble, passing him outside in the gardens, even forgot the differences in their stations to exclaim to Yuuya that the new heir was piping. That means that Yuuya's brother is alive in the shell and making sounds when spoken to. Soon he'll hatch.

Which leaves _that bastard's_ egg. Yuuya had tucked it away into the bedding of his boulin, where he'd kept his brother's egg, but he hadn't really bothered trying to incubate it. He's not sure now why he didn't just smash it right after the switch, but no matter. He can do that now, and so during the excitement of the first piping he prepares to smuggle it out.

It's a job carrying that egg. Yuuya has all his feathers, the ability to fly, and a developing appreciation for a beautiful tail, but he's quite young and not as big and strong as an adult. He can't just cup it in the space between his body and one wing like he saw Mother do once... he had tried that with his brother and _dropped_ him, though the distance wasn't that far and it was just back into the nest, the shell didn't crack and apparently it's fine... he hopes... anyway, if he does that too much to the spare it will break inside where he'll have to clean it up.

So Yuuya has removed a pillowcase and stuffed the egg into that, and slung it around his neck and knotted it. It's an awkward weight and anyone who sees him from the front will know he's carrying an egg.

Fortunately, it's not likely. Yuuya's boulin is near the servant's quarters - very near, in fact, he can hear them come and go and talk amongst themselves every evening - but they're all busy at this time of the day, managing this ridiculous house and dancing attendance on the noblebirds. Technically some are supposed to keep an eye on him, but they usually don’t. Only Mother bothers to pay much attention to him anymore, and she... is busy.

Whatever. Yuuya takes a set of concealed servant stairs to the ground floor, letting the shell jostle and click against one of the narrow walls, a little revenge against the ache it's building in his neck. Once down the stairs he pokes his beak out into the much more open space where that bastard and his family strut about. The noblebirds are all out near the nursery, but he sees a seagull's back as the maid wipes down some of the pointless priceless vases, and Yuuya cups a wing to cover the egg hanging around his neck before he steps out.

He's nervous. If she notices... what will he say? The thick rugs help him, swallow any sounds his claws might have made on the glossy hardwood. If she sees him, she says nothing, and he is outside free.

The grounds around the mansion are beautiful. Yuuya may have gotten used to the luxury inside the mansion, enough so to understand that the size and placement of his boulin, the contents and times and locations where he gets his meals, and many other things are insults, every bit as much as that bastard and his family making statements about impure breeding within earshot. But outside, with the manicured lawns, the groomed trees, the acres of space and greenery and open skies, is still grand. As he always does Yuuya shoves away the thought that his father might have liked it.

No gardeners today, like he saw earlier, but it's worth hurrying anyway. Yuuya makes a furtive dash out across the receiving court and out to where the tall bushes screen him from the mansion's windows, feeling the spare egg bob and jerk uncomfortably around his neck with each hasty step. He glowers balefully at it once he can stop.

Better keep going. Yuuya cups the egg in its pillowcase in both wings, remiges laced together like a basket, and ducks his head back out of the loop before setting off. This isn't much better. The thing is heavy. He tries several ways of carrying it as he walks off along the pebbled path, and as he leaves it to trudge across grass and flowers, without finding any pose that stays comfortable. If he was a little bigger he might have been able to fly holding the pillowcase in his claws, but he isn’t strong enough yet, and the idea of trying to hold steady at a low height with that weight swinging around is daunting.

To distract himself he talks to the egg, alternating between French and his mother tongue freely. Here with no one to overhear him, his French is not so halting and stilted. "That bastard doesn't know you’ve been replaced. He'll think my brother is you, and he will love him, and he will feed him, and give him nice things, he will train him as a noble... he will love him, and never think, _He is a mongrel_. Never, unless I tell him. What would he do, do you think? Do you think I should tell him, one day?"

He hefts the egg up and shakes it near his ear, feeling the yolk shift under the shell with the movement, and nods as if that were an answer. "I suppose I shouldn't. If your papa would kill mine, he wouldn’t think twice about doing in a couple of chicks. Okay. He can just be happy in not knowing. It will be our secret, you heavy egg."

This looks like a good place. He's been walking through a rougher area for a while now, where the field is left to just grow as it will, and there are stones about, as if the Le Bels thought they would like their own Stonehenge but were too lazy to finish. It seems like a good place to picnic, but these noblebirds don't, often. By the time the shell is found, if it is found, they will not connect it to the hatchling heir at all.

"You know the saying, right? Two can keep a secret if one is dead?" In the middle of the stones Yuuya takes the empty end of the pillowcase in his beak, pulling the egg up off the ground, and starts to turn in place. Around and around, until the egg is swinging out in front of him and he's half spreading his wings to try and stay stable, spinning like a Pigeolympian.

Before he can become too dizzy, Yuuya opens his beak and lets the egg go flying like a discus. The sound of it colliding with one of the stones is not what he might have expected. The crack is soft and liquid; clearly, the pillowcase was no protection. Coming out of the spin, Yuuya crouches in the grass his feet have flattened and waits for the world to stop whirling around him.

"World record," he says, dazed, and then realizes it would have been cooler, snappier, if he'd said _Sayonara_ or perhaps _Adieu_ instead. Pity. If he tells the story one day - in that hazy future where he's brought the Le Bels down, somehow, laid the great family low - he'll have to make this part good.

That will come later. For now he feels light, almost giddy. He's really done it! He's pulled it off! The warm sun beams down on him as if in blessing. In a minute he will take off and fly just for the joy of it. Everything changes now. Being part of that household will be bearable, now. All he has to do is think of the heir, how really now it was _easy_ to get the best of all those superior noblebirds, and he will smile.

The vertigo is fading. Yuuya clicks his beak with annoyance, thinking that he should have taken the egg out from the pillowcase before smashing it. Maybe he can wash it off?

He sees that it's wet now and yolky, crumpled at the base of one of the stones. And... he feels the blood drain from his operculum.

There is the slightest trembling under the threadbare cloth. There is no wind just now, and even if there had been it would not have made the cloth quiver but not the wildflowers around it.

Yuuya knows what that means.

He knows what it means.

He knows.

He counts back the days between now and the announcement that Mother had laid this egg, and remembers that he hasn’t done anything to make his boulin cooler and drier than when he’d been keeping his brother’s egg in it, and even though it hasn’t been nearly long enough for it to be near hatching, of course the inside of this egg isn't just a yolk with a spot of blood or a network of red veins. Of course it isn't.

He knows what's in the sack. He doesn't have to go any closer and open it and look. But, cold despite the unchanging sun, he does anyway, and watches until it stops quivering. It doesn’t take long.

Somehow he hadn’t thought about this, though he should have. It’s obvious now.

Of course, Yuuya had to do it. It was this egg... his half-brother’s egg, or his full brother’s egg, the egg Mother had with Papa. He couldn’t unmake that choice. ...He wouldn’t choose differently, if he had to again, and he realizes this even as he’s still looking at the dead chick. He wouldn’t. If there’d been an orphanage close enough or something - but there hadn’t been. Yuuya can speculate forever about if things were different, but the truth is that they aren’t.

Not that that really helps. Not that that changes anything about this. He’s still just done something horrible, and it’s like the weight is back around his neck, choking him.

Well, he can’t just leave it here. Eggshell is one thing, but the beak and claws, maybe the bones if they’re hard enough to stick around a little... that will raise some suspicions. So Yuuya finds a place against one of the stones and tears through the plants and their roots, digs with both feet into the damp earth. Little insects race away as he claws a hole into the ground, but he’s never been less hungry.

When he can’t dig anymore Yuuya goes back to the pillowcase and lifts it and its contents. Eggstuff the consistency of jelly has oozed out and wetted the grass and the stone it broke upon, so it should be lighter. Somehow it isn’t. He lays it in the hole, and kicks the dirt back over it, and puts the shredded plants back over that. It looks more ruffled than its surroundings, which are still sprinkled with dirt crumbs, but it should seem normal enough, in a few days.

Then he stands over the... grave? The pit where he buried the evidence? unmoving. Yuuya’s throat works several times, but nothing comes out.

“Sorry,” he says at last. “I-” It hits him, how _meaningless_ anything he has to say would be, and he runs.


End file.
